


I'll sit here in silence (with you)

by lenapinewoods



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 12:35:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18873322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lenapinewoods/pseuds/lenapinewoods
Summary: “I’m not afraid when I’m here with you.”





	I'll sit here in silence (with you)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [rarepair_shorts](https://rarepair-shorts.livejournal.com) Winter Exchange event 2018.

There were four of them, two muggles and two blood traitors. A man, a woman, a teenager and a child. He could see the Death Eaters’ faces in the shadows as they surrounded the four, eyes gleaming with hatred and glee. He felt pity and fear and then something else; a strange surge of desire, a desire to hurt. He raised his wand and pointed it at the people in front of him. He could see the fear on their faces and he heard his own laughter, it was high pitched, maniacal screaming, just like Bellatrix’s. Then he looked at the giant, gold framed mirror on the wall, and he saw Greyback staring back at him. He screamed, but Greyback’s face in the mirror kept smiling a twisted distortion of a smile, filthy teeth exposed. He looked back at the people in front of him but now there was only one, the child. They were alone in the room, just the little boy and him. The little boy looked at him with teary eyes and whispered, “Please don’t hurt me. I just wanted to be good for mommy.”

Draco screamed.

He woke up in cold sweat, gasping. He lay awake in the darkness of his room, waiting for his breath to slow down. It was still dark outside, which meant it had to be early. When he finally calmed down a little, he rolled over to his side and glimpsed at the small antique clock on his bedside table. It was almost six. He gave out a sigh, trying hard to not let the nightmare take over. It had never been easy living in this house, but this year had been particularly bad. It was just two days since he had come home for Christmas, but he was already ready to leave. Not that it was any better at Hogwarts – it wasn’t better anywhere, not for Draco Malfoy. No matter where he was, he couldn’t change the fact that his parents were Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy, nor the fact that the Dark Lord was living under the same roof with his family. He couldn’t change his own lineage, the generations of pureblood witches and wizards standing behind him, their haughty eyes judging him. Draco knew that he wasn’t any better than them, if anything, he was just as bad, just as corrupted and weak and inherently evil.

The silence of the early morning was broken by the slam of a door. It came from downstairs; Draco walked to his door and opened it. For a moment it was completely quiet, but then he heard someone speaking in a low voice. He hesitated a little, but finally decided to go and see. This was his house after all, he had the right to know who came and who left and why. Or at least that was what he told himself.

“Ah, Draco,” Lucius Malfoy said, as Draco entered the hall downstairs. “Look son, Thorfinn has brought me – I mean, the Dark Lord – an early Christmas present.”

Thorfinn Rowle, one of his father’s associates, was standing in front of Lucius with a complacent smile on his face. Next to him was a young, unconscious woman, floating in the air. Draco felt his insides clutch with fear as he recognized the long, dirty blonde hair that covered the woman’s face.

“Is she dead?” he asked, forcing his voice to stay calm and indifferent.

“Unfortunately not,” Lucius said. “She’s more useful to us alive. For now. Take her to the basement, Thorfinn. She can rot down there until we decide what to do with her.”

 

…

 

“You can talk to me, you know,” Luna looked at Draco, smiling faintly. Draco didn’t say anything. They were sitting in the shadows, Draco on a small wooden stool and Luna on the floor of the basement. The only thing separating them were the magically cast bars enforced with dark magic. Draco thought the bars were rather dramatic, even for his father.

“I mean, I’ll sit here in the silence with you if you want. Sometimes it’s easier to not say anything. Sometimes not saying anything is good. But it isn’t always good, you know. And we have been sitting here in silence for quite a few days now.”

“You aren’t being very silent though, are you?” Draco said brusquely. “I should hex your mouth shut or – or go tell my father that you’re being disobedient.”

“But then you couldn’t come here again. And wouldn’t they wonder what you did here in the first place?”

Draco didn’t say anything.

Luna smiled again. “Don’t worry, I haven’t told anyone you come here to see me. I won’t tell anyone that you want to talk to me either.”

They sat in silence for a little while longer.

“Did they hurt you when they captured you?” Draco said, after a while.

“Only a little.”

Draco looked at the ground. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, don’t be. It wasn’t your fault. Besides, there are so many people who have suffered, and are currently suffering much more than I am.”

Draco felt his stomach turn. He must have looked absolutely miserable, because Luna said, “You can’t help everyone, even if you wanted to.”

“I’m not trying to help anyone,” Draco said darkly.

“Would you like to?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” he snarled. “Don’t you see that? My path is paved. It’s paved with doom and Death Eater parents. And failure. Ultimate failure. I was born bad. I can’t stop it – the evil grows inside me like a sprout, like some diseased sprout that surged from a rotten seed. There’s nothing good inside me. Nothing.”

“I think you’re being rather dramatic now,” Luna said softly.

“The other night I dreamt that I was going to hurt people. I dreamt that I _wanted_ to hurt them. _Wanted_ to, Luna. There was a little boy in the dream. And I wanted to hurt him. What does that say about me?”

“Do you really want to hurt people?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do know.”

“No, I don’t. Want to, I mean. I don’t think I want to.”

“Then I think it was just a dream. Moon frogs can cause dreams like that, you know,” Luna said, lightly.

“Don’t talk to me about your insane delusions. It’s not like your imaginary beasts can help me,” Draco snarled.

“Oh, I didn’t say the moon frogs could help you, I just said they can cause dreams like that.”

“What do you mean dreams like what?” Draco asked, impatient.

“Dreams that reveal something about yourself.”

Draco felt his stomach turn again.

“So, you do think I am twisted,” he said darkly. “Evil.”

Luna composed herself in a cross-legged position and faced Draco.

“What else was there in the dream?” she asked.

“I looked at myself in the mirror and I saw Greyback,” Draco said.

“And you wanted to hurt a little boy.”

Draco nodded.

“Have you thought that maybe that little boy was yourself?”

Draco frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Did Greyback ever try to hurt you when you were a child?”

Draco was quiet for a while. A blurred image rose up in his mind of him alone in the sitting-room as a child, Greyback’s nasty hand grabbing him by the shoulder, his filthy face close to his face… and his own voice saying, “Please don’t hurt me”. And then, suddenly, Narcissa’s ice-cold voice, “What the hell do you think you’re doing with my son, Fenrir?”

Draco nodded slowly. “I think– he did. I can’t remember very well. But I know he likes to hurt children.”

“Mm-hmm. He tried to hurt you when you were little. A lot of people have tried to hurt you. And you’re hurting yourself too.”

“What do you mean?”

“You believe you’re bad, and I think in a way you believe – or a part of you believes – that because of that you deserve to be hurting.”

Draco didn’t say anything.

“Sometimes, in dreams, we can be several people. Well, in reality that’s possible too, if you make a potion with heliopath’s milk. But I won’t tell you about that, because I don’t think you believe heliopaths even exist. Anyway, in dreams we can be several people and they can represent parts of ourselves. And we can be other people too.”

“Have you been reading that weird Muggle science where they fiddle with people’s brains?” Draco asked, suspicious.

“Psychology is very fascinating. Padma Patil’s Muggle cousin is a psychologist and she lent me some really interesting books during the last year.”

Draco leaned his face on his hands. “Why am I even listening to you,” he mumbled. “You believe in moon frogs and heliopanthers–”

“Heliopaths,” Luna corrected.

“–psychology isn’t even a real thing. It’s like those X-ray machines Muggles use.”

Luna gave out a little laugh. “Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if we didn’t have to live in hiding, but we could live together with Muggles, helping each other. I bet we could learn a lot from them.”

Draco looked at her, horrified. He definitely didn’t want to learn anything about Muggles’ doctors and their scary machines and instruments they used to poke and cut people with.

They were both quiet for a moment.

“Aren’t you afraid?” Draco asked, after a while.

“Sometimes. I was afraid when the Death Eater kidnapped. But I’m not afraid when I’m here with you.”

“You should be afraid now. You don’t know what I might do to you.”

Luna smiled at him. “You’re very sweet, Draco, but I have already made up some very convincing scenarios in my head in which you threaten and torture me. In case someone finds out you came down here to talk to me, you know. So don’t worry, if someone finds out, I will tell them you were horrible to me, and very evil.”

Draco laughed, and realized that he didn’t remember the last time he had laughed. It felt good, laughing. But then he remembered why he hadn’t laughed for a long time, and he felt a temptation to succumb back to despair.

“But what if there really is evil inside me that I can’t control?” he said miserably. “What if there’s a part of me that enjoys other people’s pain?”

“I think there’s a part like that inside everyone of us. Everybody has a potential to be evil and do evil things. But the fact that you’re so worried about it proves – to me, at least – that that part is not who you really are.”

“But I don’t know who I am.”

Luna shrugged. “I can’t say I know you that well, because we are in different Houses at Hogwarts. We didn’t really spend time with each other and you were kind of mean to me, when we were younger.”

Draco lowered his eyes, ashamed. Luna continued slowly, “It’s okay. I know you were afraid. I know you are afraid. You feel everything so intensely, and you love so intensely too. You love your parents so much,” she paused and looked at Draco, head tilted. “I think, after all, you have quite a beautiful soul, Draco Malfoy.”

Draco looked at Luna, bewildered. How could this strange girl know how he felt and how could she observe him like that? How could anyone, let alone her, still see something good in him?

He got up from his stool, sat on the floor opposite of Luna and reached his hand through the bars. He took Luna’s small, pale hand into his own and they sat like that for a while, in silence, opposite one another.

“I think you should go,” Luna said finally. “You will get into trouble if you stay here for too long. People will start to wonder where you are. It’s Christmas Eve, after all.”

Draco nodded. “I can bring you some Christmas cake from the kitchen. Later, if you’d like.”

Luna smiled. “That would be lovely.”

Draco got up and walked to the door that lead upstairs. At the door he turned to glance back at Luna. She was looking at the stone wall now, intent, as if there was something fascinating about the grey wall only she could see. How strange she was, strangely amazing, he thought. And beautiful, strangely beautiful too. He should have to get her cake later. He couldn’t do much, but at least he could bring her cake. That was a start.


End file.
